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Audio News for April 24, 2015 - Audiophile Audition

AUDIOPHILE AUDITION is a free international online magazine for audio buffs, record collectors and music lovers, publishing up to 100 disc reviews monthly of classical, jazz, pop, movies, documentaries, and operas on Blu-ray and DVD, vinyl, CDs and hi-res formats.

Audio News for April 24, 2015

PBS Subwoofer Mounts Any Way – The new SubSeries 150 ($499) can be placed horizontally under furniture, in media cabinets, vertically on the floor, or on the wall. Its curved gloss-black cabinet measures about 17” by 11” by 4”, with a 6.5” polypropylene woofer. It features a 100 watt amp with 200 watt peak output, top-mounted controls for volume, a variable crossover and a phase control. It delivers down to 26Hz.

Four-Screen Display for TVs – Four-Screen Enhanced TV plans to have a unit at $179 by July which streams up to four over-the-air TV channels to up to four Wi-Fi-connected video devices at a time. One user can monitor all four streams on a mobile device and then case one channel to the networked TV to watch the big play. Four separate smartphones or tablets can also display any of the four different channels in full-screen mode.

DTS Withdraws DTS:X from 3.0 Broadcast TV Standard Consideration – However, no details were offered as to the reason.

SMS Audio Teams Up with Marvel & Reebok – The celebrity tie-ins continue in the headphone business, of which Dre’s Beats is probably the best known since it was bought by Apple. SMS Audio had added two more to its list of partnershps, with MArvel Entertainment and Reebok having their own lines of licensed co-branded headphones. The Marvel phones will be available in July and are on-ear wired, waterproof models with an in-line mic, featuring Marvel characters. Retail will be $99.95. The Reebok line will be out in August. SMS Audio was founded by rapper “50 Cent” Jackson; they now have deals with Disney World Resort and Disneyland as well as Intel.

Five Classical Music Controversies – The BBC lists some of the classical works which have caused a hullabaloo: 1) Jonas Tarm had his award-winning piece March to Oblivion cancelled for an upcoming Carnegie Hall performance due to its quoting musically both a Soviet-era anthem and the official song of the Nazi party. 2) Bach’s St. John Passion has a section in it in which the gospel in question refers to the enemies of Jesus as “the Jews, the Jews, the Jews.” – the word is repeated 70 times. There have been public demonstrations against its performance and critics have written about it. 3) Beethoven originally had dedicated his great “Eroica” Symphony No. 3 to Napoleon, and was going call it “Bonaparte.” But then Napoleon made himself Emperor and the dedication was defaced, Beethoven denouncing Napoleon as “a tyrant.” 4) The Paris premiere of Erik Satie’s Parade ballet in 1917 almost created as major a riot as the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring had in 1913. Satie used gunshots, foghorns, typewriter sounds, sirens and milk bottles clanking, and the audience rioted and threw oranges at the orchestra. 5) 4’33” was considered by John Cage as his most important work, but critics and audiences have declared it a poor joke. The performer of the piece is instructed to not play for the entire duration of the three-movement work. Cage said the point was that there is no silence – people just don’t know how to listen.